


Make the Peach Tree Bloom

by songofsunset



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-14 23:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9209441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofsunset/pseuds/songofsunset
Summary: When Eric is 11, his parents get a letter informing them that he is a wizard.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this a bit back due to my firm opinions about how wizarding America would Actually Work. This is working off the premise of regional american wizarding schools, and is mostly just a drabble for world-building. Enjoy!

When Eric is 11, his parents get a letter informing them that he is a wizard.

They are god-fearing Christian folk, they really are, but this explains so much about all the strange things that happen when Eric is emotional, or scared, or really really happy. His parents glance at the crosses on the wall, then lean their heads close together to read through the letter again.

Eric goes outside, and tries to make the peach tree bloom.

———

They are invited to a barbecue to ‘get to know the local magic community’, and when they show up in the yellow haze of the afternoon sunlight, Eric is squirming and sweating through his nicest shirt and his parents are glancing at each other nervously in their best shoes and that necklace passed down from Eric’s moo-maw that his mother only wears on special occasions. Eric’s mother clutches her pie. The grass crackles under their feet as they follow the sounds of people, but when they make it around to the back yard, there is a small crowd of locals and-

“-Darla?” Eric’s mother asks, seeing a women from the local congregation. They were in choir together, until Eric’s mother had that surgery a couple months back and couldn’t make it to practice anymore.

“Suzanne!” Darla says, gesturing broadly with a ladle of potato salad. “It’s great to see you! Now you just put that pie right now there and come have a chat with me. I hear you had some very exciting news recently!”

“Oh,” says Eric’s mother, finding a space on the overflowing potluck tables. “Well, I suppose you might call it that.”

“It must have been such a shock,” Darla gushes. “I know it was when my John- you know, his family is from out west? Turns out there’s been magic in the family for absolutely decades and decades. He told me when we got engaged, and I’ll have you know that my three boys are some of the best little charm-workers this side of the Mississippi!”

Eric and his father are passed paper plates of potato salad and deviled eggs and herded in the general direction of the grill.

The men there are griping about hunting season and cooking times, and casually sipping beer, but Eric sees one of the men poking at the coals with a slim wooden stick, and some of the bowls of meat glazes appear to be stirring themselves. The men greet his father, and Eric allows himself to relax, just a little, and look around.

The backyard is medium-large, full of bright green grass and ringed by massive twisting moss-draped live oaks, with a swimming pool, and an old swingset out past that, in the corner of the yard. Cheerful chains of american flags drape around the yard, but when Eric takes a closer look, he realizes that they aren’t attached to anything, just floating at seeming random points in the air. Some of the adults are dressed in weird colorful robes, like they’re in a choir performance or something, and some people’s drinks are just- floating next to them, or sitting on hovering trays. Something shifts behind the tablecloth and Eric peers under it, expecting a dog, or a baby, but-

“May I offer you refreshments?” says a gravelly voice, and it takes every drop of politeness Eric has cultivated in his eleven years of life to plaster on a smile and say, “Uh, yes please?”

There is a small wrinkled creature about two feet tall, dressed only in a bright red Georgia Bulldogs washtowel draped like a toga. Its ears are massive and its eyes bulge as it gestures, and two hotdogs assemble themselves in midair, with relish and mustard, the way Eric likes them, and land gently on his plate. Punch swirls out of the bowl and into a plastic glass that floats over and hovers itself next to Eric’s elbow.

“Is this sufficient, Master Bittle?” the creature asks, and Eric just nods, and watches the creature retreat back behind the tablecloth. He blinks down at the hotdogs, working up the courage to actually take a bite.

“So you’re the newbie?”

The voice is right next to him, and Eric turns too fast, jostling his cup of punch, and nearly losing his balance. The person, a sandy-haired kid about Eric’s age, laughs, and gestures the spilled punch back into the cup before it can hit the ground.

“That was just Gorby, he’s our house-elf. He’s like that. I keep asking if we can just hire a butler, but my dad says that the house-elves need us to take care of them and stuff.”

Eric tries to come up with something to say, but finds that he has no words appropriate to this situation. “Nice to meet you?” he tries.

The kid rolls his eyes. “I’m David. This is my house. Stop standing over here with the adults, are you dumb? All of the kids are over in the treehouse. Grab a bag of chips and get over here.”

Now that he looks for it, Eric can see a fairly impressive treehouse up in the shadows behind the swing-set. Eric glances over to the adults, sees that his parents are both deep in conversation, grabs a bright red bag of chips, and trots after David.

———

From the outside, the treehouse looks like a one-room affair, a bit dirty and broken down, but with a shingled roof and a railed porch. The ladder is creaky, and Eric is glad that his plate and cup float up after him as he climbs, and when he ducks a little and slides inside-

Well. The treehouse is larger than it looks.

It has at least 4 rooms inside, each of them large enough to fit a couch and a couple of chairs, and when Eric enters the first room, the kids cheer and usher him in to where the kids seem to have set up their own potluck table, one that consists mostly of chips and snack cakes snuck from the adult table, even if Eric doesn’t recognize half the brands.

The chips are taken from him and he is shoved onto a spindly chair and surrounded by eager faces, mostly kids his own age with one or two that appear to be as young as 5, following cheerfully after their older siblings.

“Well?” they demand, and Eric shrinks in on himself a little. Well what? he wonders, but David comes to his rescue.

“Well, are you going to tell us what sort of magic you can do?”

“I- okay,” says Eric. “I mostly make things grow? And sometimes things- bake themselves for me?”

There is a murmur of discussion, and the group decides that this is adequately cool, though nothing compared to Jeremiah from last year who could set things on fire with his mind.

“Here!” demands one of the five year olds, thrusting a cootie catcher at him. “Choose!”

Eric points timidly at one of the flaps. She opens it in that direction.

“Choose again!” she demands, and Eric looks at a smirking David before picking a flap marked with a yellow circle.

The girl grins, pulls open the flap, and- a giant cloud of yellow glitter billows around them, and there are shrieks of laughter. Eric blinks, but most of the cloud fades within a second or two, leaving traces of sparkly residue all over him.

“Be glad you didn’t pick the red one,” David confides. “The red one would have covered you in jello.”

Eric isn’t sure what his face does, but it makes David laugh, and Eric finds himself being dragged around the room and being introduced to all the kids, floating cup of punch and suspiciously glittering plate of hot-dogs in tow.

———

(A handful of years later, Eric and David sneak out to that same treehouse to share their first kiss.)


End file.
